and consideration. This gradual course, on the other side, will prevent men, long under depression, from being intoxicated with a large draught of new power, which they always abuse with a licentious insolence. But wishing, as I do, the change to be gradual and cautious, I would, in my first steps, lean rather to the side of enlargement than restriction.

You

It is one excellence of our constitution, that all our rights of provincial election regard rather property than person. It is another, that the rights which approach more nearly to the personal are most of them corporate, and suppose a restrained and strict education of seven years in some useful occupation. In both cases the practice may have slid from the principle. The standard of qualification in both cases may be so low, or not so judiciously chosen, as in some degree to frustrate the end. But all this is for your prudence in the case before you. may raise, a step or two, the qualification of the Catholic voters. But if you were, tomorrow, to put the Catholic freeholder on the footing of the most favoured forty-shilling Protestant dissenter, you know that such is the actual state of Ireland, this would not make a sensible alteration in almost any one election in the kingdom. The effect in their favour, even defensively, would be infinitely slow. But it would be healing; it would be satisfactory and protecting. The stigma would be removed. By admitting settled, permanent substance in lieu of the numbers, you would avoid the great danger of our time, that of setting up number against property. The numbers ought never to be neglected; because (besides what is due to them as men) collectively, though not individually, they have great property: they ought to have therefore protection: they ought to have security: they ought to have even consideration: but they ought not to predominate.

My dear sir, I have nearly done; I meant to write you a long letter; I have written a long dissertation. I might have done it earlier and better. I might have been more forcible and more clear, if I had not been interrupted as I have been; and this obliges me not to write to you in my own hand. Though my hand but signs it, my heart goes with what I have written. Since I could think at all, those have been my thoughts. You know that thirty-two years ago they were as fully matured in my mind as they are now. A letter of mine to Lord Kenmare, though not by my desire, and full of lesser mistakes, has been printed in Dublin. It was written ten or twelve years ago, at the time when I began the employment, which I have not yet finished, in favour of another distressed people, injured by those who have vanquished them, or

VOL. IV.

N n

stolen a dominion over them. It contained my sentiments then : you will see how far they accord with my sentiments now. Time has more and more confirmed me in them all. The present circumstances fix them deeper in my mind.

I voted last session, if a particular vote could be distinguished, in unanimity, for an establishment of the Church of England conjointly with the establishment which was made some years before by act of parliament, of the Roman Catholic, in the French conquered country of Canada. At the time of making this English ecclesiastical establishment, we did not think it necessary for its safety to destroy the former Gallican Church settlement. In our first act, we settled a government altogether monarchical, or nearly so. In that system, the Canadian Catholics were far from being deprived of the advantages or distinctions, of any kind, which they enjoyed under their former monarchy. It is true, that some people, and amongst them one eminent divine, predicted at that time, that by this step we should lose our dominions in America. He foretold that the pope would send his indulgences hither; that the Canadians would fall in with France; would declare independence, and draw or force our colonies into the same design. The independence happened according to his prediction; but in directly the reverse order. All our English Protestant countries revolted. They joined themselves to France: and it so happened that popish Canada was the only place which preserved its fidelity; the only place in which France got no footing; the only peopled colony which now remains to Great Britain. Vain are all the prognostics taken from ideas and passions, which survive the state of things which gave rise to them. When last year we gave a popular representation to the same Canada, by the choice of the landholders, and an aristocratic representation, at the choice of the crown, neither was the choice of the crown, nor the election of the landholders, limited by a consideration of religion. We had no dread for the Protestant Church, which we settled there, because we permitted the French Catholics, in the utmost latitude of the description, to be free subjects. They are good subjects, I have no doubt; but I will not allow that any French Canadian Catholics are better men or better citizens than the Irish of the same communion. Passing from the extremity of the west to the extremity almost of the east ; I have been many years (now entering into the twelfth) employed in supporting the rights, privileges, laws, and immunities, of a very remote people. I have not as yet been able to finish my task. I have struggled through much discouragement and much opposition, much obloquy, much calumny, for a people with whom I have

no tie, but the common bond of mankind. In this I have not been left alone. We did not fly from our undertaking, because the people are Mahometans or pagans, and that a great majority of the Christians amongst them are Papists. Some gentlemen in Ireland, I dare say, have good reasons for what they may do, which do not occur to me. I do not presume to condemn them: but thinking and acting as I have done towards these remote nations, I should not know how to show my face, here or in Ireland, if I should say that all the pagans, all the Mussulmen, and even all the Papists (since they must form the highest stage in the climax of evil), are worthy of a liberal and honourable condition, except those of one of the descriptions, which forms the majority of the inhabitants of the country in which you and I were born. If such are the Catholics of Ireland,-ill-natured and unjust people, from our own data, may be inclined not to think better of the Protestants of a soil, which is supposed to infuse into its sects a kind of venom unknown in other places.

You hated the old system as early as I did. Your first juvenile lance was broken against that giant. I think you were even the first who attacked the grim phantom. You have an exceedingly good understanding, very good humour, and the best heart in the world. The dictates of that temper and that heart, as well as the policy pointed out by that understanding, led you to abhor the old code. You abhorred it, as I did, for its vicious perfection. For I must do it justice: it was a complete system, full of coherence and consistency; well digested and well composed in all its parts. It was a machine of wise and elaborate contrivance; and as well fitted for the oppression, impoverishment, and degradation of a people, and the debasement, in them, of human nature itself, as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man. It is a thing humiliating enough, that we are doubtful of the effect of the medicines we compound. We are sure of our poisons. My opinion ever was (in which I heartily agree with those that admired the old code) that it was so constructed, that if there was once a breach in any essential part of it, the ruin of the whole, or nearly of the whole, was, at some time or other, a certainty. For that reason I honour, and shall for ever honour and love you, and those who first caused it to stagger, crack, and gape.-Others may finish; the beginners have the glory; and, take what part you please at this hour, (I think you will take the best,) your first services will never be forgotten by a grateful country. Adieu! Present my best regards to those I know, and as many as I know in our country I honour. There never was so much ability, nor, I believe, virtue in it. They have

548 A LETTER TO SIR HERCULES LANGRISHE, M.P.

a task worthy of both. I doubt not they will perform it, for the stability of the church and state, and for the union and the separation of the people: for the union of the honest and peaceable of all sects; for their separation from all that is ill-intentioned and seditious in any of them.

Beaconsfield, January 3, 1792.

HINTS FOR A MEMORIAL

TO BE DELIVERED TO

MONSIEUR DE M. M.

WRITTEN IN THE EARLY PART OF 1791.

THE king, my master, from his sincere desire of keeping up a good correspondence with his Most Christian majesty, and the French nation, has for some time beheld, with concern, the condition into which that sovereign and nation have fallen.

Notwithstanding the reality and the warmth of those sentiments, his Britannic majesty has hitherto forborne in any manner to take part in their affairs; in hopes, that the common interest of king and subjects would render all parties sensible of the necessity of settling their government, and their freedom, upon principles of moderation; as the only means of securing permanence to both these blessings, as well as internal and external tranquillity, to the kingdom of France, and to all Europe.

His Britannic majesty finds, to his great regret, that his hopes have not been realized. He finds, that confusions and disorders have rather increased than diminished, and that they now threaten to proceed to dangerous extremities.

In this situation of things, the same regard to a neighbouring sovereign living in friendship with Great Britain, the same spirit of good will to the kingdom of France, the same regard to the general tranquillity, which have caused him to view, with concern, the growth and continuance of the present disorders, have induced the King of Great Britain to interpose his good offices towards a reconcilement of those unhappy differences. This his majesty does with the most cordial regard to the good of all descriptions concerned, and with the most perfect sincerity, wholly removing from his royal mind all memory of every circumstance